The thing about lighting is that it varies so much. How you light your scene will depend on what you are trying to achieve, on your specific scene and camera placement, on your artistic eye, if it’s a character, if it’s a room, an exterior shot, etc, etc. There are generic setups like the three point lighting and such, but it’s not like polygon modeling where there are rules that I can tell you and you have to follow them to get a good result, lighting is more ethereal and depends on what you want the mood to be like. And it’s one of those things that can make or break a render. You can have modeled the best and most awesome model ever and your final image where you present it can fall flat because of bad lighting. So experiment a lot, move lights around, use HDRI’s, turn off lights and turn them on one by one to see what is being influenced. It takes patience but it’s worth it.
Two courses to follow, one right here on CG Cookie:
https://cgcookie.com/courses/fundamentals-of-digital-lighting-in-blender
And the Gleb one:
https://blendermarket.com/products/cinematic-lighting-in-blender
